Category: by country

Swiss funding agency cuts off Voinnet, bans him for 3 years

Olivier Voinnet
Olivier Voinnet

The Swiss National Science Foundation has stopped funding prominent plant scientist Olivier Voinnet, following months of questions about his work that have culminated in multiple retractions and corrections.

The agency confirmed to us that it has also banned Voinnet from seeking funding from the SNSF for three years.

We asked the SNSF the amount of funding Voinnet was receiving from SNSF at the time of this decision. They told us it was 1.25 million Swiss francs, equivalent to roughly the same in U.S. dollars.

By our count, Continue reading Swiss funding agency cuts off Voinnet, bans him for 3 years

Ontario court quashes part of misconduct finding for prominent pair

Sylvia Asa
Sylvia Asa
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Shereen Ezzat

An Ontario court has quashed part of a misconduct finding against a prominent husband and wife team by the University Health Network in Toronto.

Last year, we reported that Sylvia Asa had stepped down from her position as Program Medical Director of the Laboratory Medicine Program at the UHN — the largest hospital diagnostic laboratory in Canada — after an investigation uncovered evidence of falsified data in two papers co-authored with her husband, Shereen Ezzat. Both of their research labs were also suspended as a result. The researchers subsequently appealed the decision.

On Friday Sunday, the Toronto Star reported that the court had set aside the finding of falsification, but upheld a finding of misconduct in the form of material non-compliance. It asked UHN to review the sanctions against both researchers, and cover their legal fees of $20,000.

Here’s the conclusion from the decision:

Continue reading Ontario court quashes part of misconduct finding for prominent pair

Wound healing paper injured beyond repair

no spine minimum. full size. Editor: Jon JEM: Esther RTP: Bryan Nolte TOC image

Errors in the interpretation of some of the data — the result of “procedural flaws” —  are to blame for the retraction of a paper on a way to help skin grow back after injury.

The paper explores a method involving nanofibers. According to the abstract:

In this study, tilapia skin collagen sponge and electrospun nanofibers were developed for wound dressing…the collagen nanofibers stimulated the skin regeneration rapidly and effectively in vivo.

The paper was published January 19, 2015 by ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, then retracted eight months later, in August. It has not been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the retraction note:

Continue reading Wound healing paper injured beyond repair

Science publishes Voinnet’s 19th, 20th, and 21st corrections

351-6271-coverProminent plant biologist Olivier Voinnet has issued three more corrections in this week’s issue of Science.

Collectively, the papers have earned more than 1400 citations, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

By our count, he’s now at 21 corrections and seven retractions, following months of questions about his work. He’s been the subject of an investigation that found he “breached his duty of care,” and another which found evidence of scientific misconduct.

One correction goes against the recommendation of the ETH Commission to retract the paper for “well documented intentional manipulations.” According to the correction note, the incorrect figures did not “alter the data in any material way that could be construed to benefit the results and their conclusions.” That correction is the only one of the three for which Voinnet takes full responsibility.

The other two corrections place the responsibility on  Continue reading Science publishes Voinnet’s 19th, 20th, and 21st corrections

You’ve been dupe’d: Meet authors who like their work so much, they publish it twice

fertility and sterility

When our co-founders launched the site in 2010, they wondered whether there would be enough retractions to write about on a regular basis. Five+ years and three full-time staffers later, and we simply don’t have the time to cover everything that comes across our desk.

In 2012, we covered a group of duplication retractions in a single post, simply because duplications happen so frequently (sadly) and often don’t tell an interesting story. So in the interest of bookkeeping, we’re picking up the practice again.

Here are five unrelated retractions for your perusal: all addressing duplications, in which the same – or mostly the same – authors published the same – or mostly the same – information in two different – or sometimes the same – journals.

So, on the buffet table we offer the following entrees: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Meet authors who like their work so much, they publish it twice

Can a journal retract its plan to retract? Science may

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Science is reconsidering its plan to retract a paper about using RNA to make palladium nanoparticles after one of the authors submitted a last-minute correction.

Editor in chief Marcia McNutt told us that the journal will make a decision about whether to retract or correct the paper by February 5th.

We are not certain that what he submitted changes anything, but we wanted to consider this new information before acting.

In the meantime, today the journal issued an Expression of Concern for the paper.

The journal’s initial decision to retract the paper stemmed from an investigation at the National Science Foundation, which concluded that co-authors Bruce Eaton and Dan Feldheim — currently at the University of Colorado at Boulder — engaged in “a significant departure from standard research practices,” and cut them off from NSF funding unless they took specific actions. When the report on the investigation came to light earlier this month, Science editor in chief Marcia McNutt told us that she planned to issue a retraction:

We are checking to see how soon we can get it published.

McNutt explained what changed:  Continue reading Can a journal retract its plan to retract? Science may

So, pot may not be as harmless as a recent study suggested

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Researchers are correcting a widely covered study that suggested chronic use of pot might not put users at risk of problems later in life.

It turns out that initial, unexpected finding — covered by Newsweek, The Washington Post, Quartz, and (of course) The Stoner’s Cookbook (now known as HERB) — wasn’t quite right, and a reanalysis found users had a small uptick in risk for psychosis. The authors have issued a lengthy correction in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors that includes some supplemental analysis, too.

Not surprisingly, the study’s findings engendered some controversy, which prompted the authors to reanalyze their data, collected from 408 males with varying levels of marijuana use, who were followed from their teens into their 30s.

Now, an American Psychological Association press release that accompanied the initial findings in August contains an editors note explaining why those aren’t quite correct:

Continue reading So, pot may not be as harmless as a recent study suggested

Wiley published a biology paper in the wrong journal

Screen Shot 2016-01-04 at 2.47.07 PMWiley Periodicals is withdrawing a biochemistry paper after mistakenly publishing it in the wrong journal.

The mistake took a few months to sort out.  Wiley initially published “Protein Kinase C Is Involved in the Induction of ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter A1 Expression by Liver X Receptor/Retinoid X Receptor Agonist in Human Macrophages” online in Journal of Cellular Physiology in May of last year. The article was posted in the correct journal — Journal of Cellular Biochemistry — in July.

At the very end of 2015, the publisher officially withdrew the version it posted in the Journal of Cellular Physiology.

Here’s the withdrawal note (which is paywalled — tsk, tsk):

Continue reading Wiley published a biology paper in the wrong journal

Lawsuit against Ole Miss for rescinded Sarkar job offer dismissed; briefs filed in PubPeer case

court caseWe recently obtained court documents showing that, in September, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by cancer researcher Fazlul Sarkar against the University of Mississippi after it rescinded a job offer after reviewing concerns raised about his research on PubPeer.

Sarkar’s connection to PubPeer will be familiar to many readers — he has also taken the site to court to force them to reveal the identity of the anonymous commenters who have questioned his findings. He has accused the commenters of defamation, arguing they cost him the job offer. Today, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of PubPeer’s appeal of the court’s most recent ruling, that the site must disclose the identity of an anonymous commenter. At the same time, some heavy hitters in science – Bruce Alberts and Harold Varmus — and technology — Google and Twitter — filed briefs in support of the appeal.

The lawsuit against Ole Miss has brought to light the reasoning behind the school’s decision to rescind their offer to Sarkar — and the key role played by the concerns raised on PubPeer.

In a letter dated June 19, 2014 to Sarkar from Larry Walker, the director of the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi, Walker chides Sarkar for not revealing the extent of the ongoing questions over his research during the interview process:

Continue reading Lawsuit against Ole Miss for rescinded Sarkar job offer dismissed; briefs filed in PubPeer case

Here are the 10 — yes, 10 — reasons PLOS ONE retracted this paper

Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 10.50.25 AMPLOS One is retracting a paper for overlapping with a Wikipedia page. And for containing material lifted from other sources. And for “language errors.” And for insufficient evidence that authors found the pathogens floating around in hospital air that they claimed to find.

The instances of plagiarism are a “huge problem,” each “enough for retraction on its own,” Jonathan Eisen, a microbiologist at the University of California, Davis, told us. Eisen, who posted several comments to the paper after its publication in October, added that the paper was “simply not technically sound.”

The paper — which even contains a spelling error in its title, “Metagenomic Human Repiratory Air in a Hospital Environment” — describes a gene sequencing method to screen the air in hospitals for pathogens. The retraction note lists 10 concerns with the paper: Continue reading Here are the 10 — yes, 10 — reasons PLOS ONE retracted this paper